I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I don't like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesn't get second-guessed you're looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, you're not. I've got an advanced degree in that lesson.

The first time I ever thought about doing a film seriously, I was in London. I was about 17 years old. I was just standing in the street, a bit dazzled by an Antonioni bus wipe, which by the way are inherent in London, and I imagined a film set in London starting out with the riff from The Yardbird's "Heart Full of Soul", and now, how ever many years later, I've done it.

If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.

Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.

You just have to know what you want and what you're doing and it leads to a kind of general well-being, which I think you sensed when you were there.